


Sanctuary Moon

by bomberqueen17



Series: The Lost Kings [8]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Shattered Empire
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Baby Snuggles, Cassian backstory stuff, F/M, Kes backstory stuff, Yavin 4, baby poe still doesn't have any lines, bad physics, his role is to smell like a baby, hot tub confessions, much as i'd love it to be, seriously this is not the hard sf primer on inhabitable moons you're looking for, this is important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 11:55:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10921308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: Introducing a setting that is more or less a character in itself.And a cameo from a Force Awakens character!





	Sanctuary Moon

 

Kes managed to wedge himself into the cockpit to watch their approach to the Rebel base at Yavin IV. The droid eyed him speculatively, but said nothing. Andor was busy, on the comms getting them clearance to approach, and listening in return, the chatter too low for Kes to hear.

Yavin IV was a moon orbiting an uninhabitable gas giant, and earlier when he’d asked, K2 had rattled off a bunch of statistics and facts about the place. Something about a vanished people with ancient ruins, exterminated by some other long-gone tribe. It all felt vaguely familiar like he’d heard the story before, but it wasn’t anything Kes could concretely recall. He was getting a lot of that, and Andor had, not reassuringly, mentioned that was a common side-effect of the hallucinations the IT-0 droids inspired. The pervasive unreality, the sense that everything had already happened-- those were the things that drove most survivors of the interrogations mad. So, Andor had said, perhaps too sunnily, the fact that Kes was aware that wasn’t right was pretty hopeful in terms of him continuing to adjust and overcome the trauma, no?

_ Sure _ , Kes had said, but he was watching the purple and swirling red hulk of the gas giant fill their viewscreen with an uneasy feeling that he’d seen a holo like this once and everyone in it had died. Surely that wasn’t right. 

“It’s night, now,” K2 said, in what he probably thought was a reassuring tone. “I mean, at our destination, it’s night.”

“I got that,” Kes said. “Thanks.”

“The orbit of the moon around the gas giant means that night is a variable concept, however,” K2 went on. “The moon is tidally locked to the planet so half of it is always lit up by reflected light from the planet, and that’s the side the base is on. At the moment, it’s between the planet and the sun, so it’s dark, but not totally dark because of the reflection.” He followed this up with a recitation of percentages of reflected light from the different surfaces of the gas giant, which then affected light levels on the moon. It was more numbers than Kes could follow.

He wondered if maybe Andor just tuned the droid out sometimes, if that was how he maintained his sanity. “Gotcha,” he settled for saying, the next time there was a pause. Andor showed no sign of having heard any of their chatter. 

“I’m just saying,” the droid went on. “If you wanted to practice your freakish orienteering skills, you’d have a nice night for it.”

“Let’s hope my welcome’s not so chilly I find the need to,” Kes said, not sure if he was meant to be amused or taken aback.

Andor slipped one of the earphones off and said, “You might want to find a seat or hang on, in case we land rough.” 

Kes considered going back to the cargo area to strap in, but there were no viewports back there, and he wanted to keep his eyes on something so he didn’t hallucinate. So he wedged himself behind the droid’s chair and hung on, watching as they swung around the gas giant and closed in on a green, green world. They flew over an ocean, dotted with rocky islands, and then came down through the atmosphere with only a little bumpiness, and burst through a cloud layer radiant with light reflected from the gas giant. 

“That’s beautiful,” Kes said, astonished. Pearlescent darkness opened out below them, heavy shadows that he couldn’t help but read as forested areas, limned in pastel silvery-purple reflections glinting from bodies of water. Ahead, as they descended, a heavy shadow loomed, like perhaps a thick forest or mountains, velvet-dark. 

Andor glanced back. “It’s pretty,” he said, “but desolate. There’s no one on this planet but us.”

“There are life-forms,” K2 corrected him, “but no sentients.”

“Also it’s humid and buggy as fuck,” Andor said. “And there are bugs and things that will actually eat you.” Kes grinned, and after a moment Andor glanced back. “You _ would _ like that,” he said. “I should have guessed.”

 

Abruptly, stone pyramids loomed up, huge and eerie in the darkness. K2 put the ship down with a sudden dive, and they alighted neatly in a flagstone courtyard that had only been partly cleared. The jungle overhung the edges of the buildings, pressing in eagerly at the fringes. The door hissed open and Kes stumbled out, and the humidity hit him like a wall, stifling and thick and hot. It flooded into his sinuses and all the tissues of his respiratory system, all his mucous membranes, his eyes and his mouth, and he stood at the base of the ship just breathing it in. It was rehydrating him, bringing parts of him back to life-- he could even feel it starting to curl his hair. 

“See,” Andor said. “Ugh. It’s like breathing a blanket.”

Kes threw his head back to breathe it deeper. “It’s  _ amazing _ ,” he said, and stumbled a few paces away from the ship so he could get a whiff of-- yes, greenery, earth, _ life _ , not the ozone and burning atmo they’d ridden in here on. It was glorious. If he had real shoes on he’d contemplate just running away into it. 

“This way,” Andor said, mouth curved slightly in a tolerant smile. “Weirdo.”

“Free air,” Kes said. “Outdoor air. It’s so good.” He got his balance, and followed Andor and K2 toward one of the looming buildings.

The jungle loomed in closer, velvet blackness tinged with the unreal shimmer of reflection. Some night-blooming vine was giving off a heavy floral scent, and it was raining somewhere in the mountains, cool moisture rolling in on a gentle breeze from the direction of the jungle.

Kes paused at the edge of the clearing as they passed a straggling patch of undergrowth. He recognized the shapes of those trees, though he couldn’t recall the species-- something that loved rainforest, specifically. But it was the leaves underneath that captivated him-- in a cleared patch, they straggled toward a sapling, and were climbing it. They were viscerally familiar, something he’d known his whole life-- distinctive, deep-cut lobes, symmetrical, and a little farther up the vine, tiny yellow blossoms, furled in the darkness, starting to set into their little poisonous fruits. 

His hand shook as he touched it, and he must have stood there a long moment because Andor came back. “What?”

Kes looked up. “Pataba,” he said, breathing the word out through his awe. It had been a staple food on Xicul, but it grew so poorly everywhere they’d ever lived during his lifetime that he’d spent his entire life grudgingly nursing it along with laborious intensity, some years not managing to produce enough surplus to eat, but instead needing to save it all for seed for the coming year to try again, just to keep the lines alive for the mythical day when they found their own new homeworld. He’d only eaten it on rare occasions, in tiny amounts, always a little bitter and a little dry, but he’d been carefully taught the proper ways of curing it and storing it to make it safe to eat. 

“What?” Andor asked, shaking his head in confusion.

“The roots are edible,” Kes said. “If-- it’s growing  _ wild _ here,” he realized. That was how ideal the climate was; it was thriving completely on its own without human intervention. He hadn’t even known that was possible, the plant took so much work for them to grow-- but that was down to their inadequate climate, surely.

Andor snorted. “Come on, Nature Boy,” he said, grabbing Kes around the shoulders. “Organa’s waiting.”

Kes plucked one of the pataba leaves as Andor pulled him away, and put it into his pocket.

For some reason he’d assumed that Andor meant one of the younger Organas, either the one who was a Senator or the one who, he actually didn’t know what Winter was up to now, he’d lost track. But none other than Bail himself was standing in the command center, distinctively tall and broad-shouldered, hands clasped behind himself in a characteristic posture Kes would not have attributed to him but his brain recognized effortlessly. Bail was leaned over slightly, listening to a slim red-haired woman in white as she spoke, but he caught sight of Andor and swiveled, straightening up. His eyes lingered on Andor for an instant, then slid to Kes, and he raised his eyebrows, looking interested and concerned. 

“Kes,” he said. “Kes Dameron, it’s good to see you,” and he stepped forward, extending an arm. “How  _ are _ you, child?”

With considerable shock, Kes realized that he could nearly look the looming, enormous Organa in the eye. “I,” he said, and recovered enough to say, “Taller, apparently, sir.” Organa still had a handful of centimeters on him, but he had towered over all of them for Kes’s entire childhood, and now Kes didn’t really have to tilt his head back to see him. 

“I was going to say the same thing,” Organa said, mouth pulling to one side in a bemused smile. “Or I’ve shrunk.” He shook his head slightly, and leaned in a little more, peering intently into Kes’s face. “Andor said you were all right, and so I’ve been assuring the folks back home that surely you are, but it’s hard to believe.”

Something in Kes’s chest squeezed brutally tight, and he took a shaky breath and said, “Have you seen-- is my-- are they all right?” His voice came out shaky, and he stopped, clamping his jaw shut so he wouldn’t lose his composure right there in front of all of these strangers and the single most intimidating person from his entire youth. 

Bail let his breath out in a sympathetic little sound, and put his hand on Kes’s shoulder, smiling softly. “Yes,” he said. “They’re all right. Your mother was injured, when they arrested you, but she made it to medical help in time. She’s recovering. Your wife-- I left several days ago, and there was no baby yet then, but she was resting as comfortably as possible, and we’re assured that all is going perfectly well. The midwives and med droids agreed that she’d surely deliver any day now. I’m certain the next news we hear will be about it.”

Kes nodded tightly. He wanted to prostrate himself and beg Organa to take him back to Alderaan, but he knew that was a terrible idea. He’d suffered enormously to make sure no one could use him to link Organa to the Rebellion. Flying straight to his arms and being escorted back to his home planet wasn’t going to do that plan any good at all. So he wavered on his feet, and nodded again, trying to collect himself enough to speak. 

Andor was still standing a little ways behind him, and Organa’s gaze lit on him.

“Captain Andor,” Organa said, “thank you. I’ve already read your report but since you’re standing right here I should thank you for doing this for me.”

“Doing,” Andor said blankly. “Oh! This. You mean Dameron. Look, he more or less rescued himself. I just had to convince him to let me fly him here.”

Kes shook his head slightly. “No,” he said, “I’d have died there. I owe you a debt.”

“We don’t keep tabs, here,” Andor said, and patted Kes on the back. “Don’t think I won’t be reporting straight to the Pathfinders about the merry chase you led me on, though.”

“What’s a Pathfinder?” Kes asked.

Andor looked him up and down, then smiled at Organa. “Well,” he said to Kes, “if you join the Rebellion, I’m sure you’ll find out.”

“The question of whether or not you actually join the Rebellion,” Bail put in heavily, pulling on Kes’s shoulder with inexorable strength, “is entirely moot, because the first thing you have to do is undergo a full medical evaluation. Andor, your say-so isn’t enough to convince me this boy’s all right.”

“I hadn’t expected it would be,” Andor said. “I’ve already prepared a dossier for the med staff.”

 

~~~~~

 

Alderaan was pretty, but it was a bit too fancy for Sento’s tastes, and it was about all he could do to keep from showing how on-edge it made him. Everyone was on-edge, but mostly it was for more justified reasons than just unease at it being too nice in here for the likes of an old spacer.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t worried about Kes. He liked the kid, a lot. Kes was a hard-working, painfully-earnest, and quick-witted guy, truly decent, thoroughly nice in a way Sento hadn’t really encountered much of in this life, and he was damn fond of the boy, and what’s more, Shara loved him and that would’ve been enough anyway. But there wasn’t much Sento could do now that the Empire was involved. Maybe the political types could sort it out, maybe not. Either way, Shara was reacting pretty powerfully, and Sento was going to do what he could to help her get somewhere with that.

But mostly, Sento was here to hold the baby, and he was trying not to let his edginess interfere with that. He was a little annoyed that he wasn’t getting to enjoy this, but it wasn’t unfamiliar-- Shara’s own birth had been pretty awful and confusing and upsetting and there had been all kinds of drama, so the idea of trying to settle a brand-new newborn infant while simultaneously dealing with a whole load of unnecessarily high-stakes shit was not a new one to Sento. He was pretty practiced at keeping up a soft voice and gentle soothing rocking motion while simultaneously engaging in pretty high-level negotiations.

At least the baby was healthy. Baby Shara had been sick right away, born fine but then something wrong with her liver, and they’d said it was no big deal but then Sento had also had to do all kinds of expensive and scary things to make sure she turned out okay, while also dealing with her idiot mother. 

But he’d made it. So he told the story to New Baby, whose father had wanted to name him Poe, and Sento wasn’t going to do anything so foolish as tell Shara that all her baby name ideas so far had been terrible, but in his head he was calling this baby Poe, and he was doing okay at only calling him Baby out loud, but he was bound to slip up at some point so he hoped the name issue got resolved before he did that in front of the wrong person.

“Baby,” he said quietly, to the tiny infant whose head was nestled trustingly in the crook of his shoulder as he slowly wandered the too-nice hallways of this real, actual palace, “that’s why it took me three years to fill out your mother’s birth certificate and get it filed just right. You know I almost named her Tania, I was that close. But try as I might, I just couldn’t make that name stick. So it wound up being Shara that worked out, and I’ve never regretted that. I don’t think she has either. But you, child, I really think you do look like a Poe, and what’s more, I think you’ll grow that name with you, and you’d do just fine as a grown-ass man named Poe. I know you don’t think so now but I bet you’ll wind up handsome, my child. And a pretty face can do what it wants with any old name.”

Baby snuffled and made one of those great little kinda-grunting noises that babies made, and Sento paused to kiss him on the head. His head smelled perfect, of course, like baby, and Sento told him so. He didn’t have much of a singing voice; people always went on and on about singing to babies, but Sento had found that just talking worked fine. Sometimes he hummed, but it was always kinda tuneless. Shara could sing all right, but she was wound up so tight that Sento knew it wouldn’t occur to her. 

She hadn’t really spoken to the kid much. He could tell this wasn’t real, wasn’t really  _ a baby _ to her, yet; she was in survival mode. She was outwardly deadly calm, but the knives showed through sometimes when she talked, and overall she’d gone pretty terrifyingly-steely. Sento was capable of the same himself, so he wasn’t exactly surprised. Other people seemed to be. 

Well, good. Sometimes it was easier to get what you needed to get when nobody expected you to be able to try. Sento had been just going along on faith that Shara knew what she was about, and he was going to keep doing that. Meanwhile, there was a baby here to raise, and that was something he knew how to do. 

He  _ was _ a beautiful baby, was the thing. Sento’s memories of this time with Shara were a little fuzzy by now, but he remembered her being funnier-looking than this, right off the bat. But this baby was pretty cute already, and it wasn’t just his grandpa-glasses making him see it that way-- everyone said so. Sento told the child this, again, as he’d told him many times. 

“There’s an art to growing up cute, though,” Sento went on, rounding the corner of the hallway. He knew all the hallways around here now, knew nobody was ever around so it was fine for him to do his slow, shuffling walks while telling the baby all kinds of things. “You’re going to have to learn that art. I was pretty cute as a kid, but your mother, now-- she started out funny-looking but she was real damn cute by about four months. When she started smiling at people, that was it, she was real cute from then on, and that’s lasted her whole life, you know? She’s pretty, and you’re gonna be pretty too, and you’re gonna have to figure out what to do about that. But don’t worry, baby child, I’m gonna be here to give you advice, and my advice seems to have worked for your pretty mama, so it’ll work for you too.”

Poe fussed a little, then settled, thumb in mouth. He was a thumb-sucker, and some of the midwife-types had made noises about him ruining his teeth that way, but Sento had laughed at them. He didn’t have any! Let it be something to worry about if he kept doing it, but as it was, it seemed to soothe him, but it also didn’t seem to keep him from eating. So let it be. He was a perfect baby. Life would present them with plenty to worry about, already was. 

“But you, my baby,” he told the child, in conclusion, “you are perfect, and at least, you know, even if we never get your papa back, at least you’re going to know he loved you. That’s got to count for something.”

“It certainly does,” a woman’s voice said, soft and sweet, and Sento managed not to startle enough to affect the child, who had been nodding off. 

“Ma’am,” he said, tipping his head in the closest approximation of a bow that he could manage without disturbing the infant, because that was definitely Queen Breha, definitely somewhat en deshabille, with her hair all loose and brushed-out, and in an embroidered but completely unstructured kind of robe like ladies in holodramas wore for lounging in exquisite gilded chambers. Sento looked around a little: well, shit, he’d taken a turn and this was  _ clearly _ not a public area of the palace, it was all lower ceilings and tastefully low-key furnishings and holy stars, he’d totally just wandered into Queen Breha’s personal apartments.

“Is he asleep?” she asked, and she didn’t look offended, just looked soft and lovely and like somebody out of a holo, like a fairy princess or something, the magical queen who showed up to save the story at the end maybe. 

“Nearly,” Sento said. “I think, ah, I took a wrong turn.”

“No,” she said, “no, don’t worry about that.” She bent to look at the child’s face without coming too close. She smelled of flowers and a hint of some kind of probably very expensive perfume, maybe something combed through her hair. You didn’t get a sense of that from holos, but it was definitely what the magical queen would smell like, Sento was sure of that. “Isn’t he precious,” she murmured. “He’s bigger than when I saw him last.”

“You saw him a couple of hours ago,” Sento pointed out.

Breha beamed. “I did,” she said. “But he’s filled out more, I can tell. They grow so fast.”

“They do,” Sento said, a little wistfully. 

“I remember his father at this size,” Breha said. 

“A lot has happened between his mother bein’ this size and now,” Sento said, and he felt like he surely must sound like a hick. He’d never talked directly to anyone this important before. “But I do sometimes forget she’s grown now.”

“Your daughter is a formidable woman,” Breha said. “I look forward very much to seeing what she accomplishes and consider myself fortunate to have had her come into my life.”

“Really,” Sento said, surprised. “I mean. I’m used to feelin’ that way but I’m not used to other people noticing.”

Breha smiled. “She’s exceptional,” she said. 

“Don’t get me started, I’ll brag about her all day,” Sento said. 

Breha laughed, a soft and exquisite little laugh, genuine but practiced. “I assume she’s resting,” she said. 

Sento nodded. “Finally,” he said. “She doesn’t stop.”

“No,” Breha said. “It’s one of the things I admire about her.”

Poe sighed, and snuggled deeper into Sento’s grip. Sento kissed his head. “I imagine once he gets going this one won’t stop either,” he said, “so I’m enjoying this phase while it lasts.” He sniffed Poe’s head. “That’s my favorite part, the part where their heads smell like baby heads. There’s nothing else like it.”

“No, there isn’t,” Breha said, looking charmed. For a moment she contemplated the child, fond and soft, and then she refocused and looked at Sento instead. “I was just about to stop in and speak with Lita,” she said. “I am sure she would be delighted if you could join me.”

“Oh,” Sento said, “good idea.” He’d cottoned on pretty easily that Shara was bitter enough about Lita’s handling of everything not to have much patience to even stand the mention of the woman. Norasol had taken care of the smuggling-the-baby-in-to-Lita while Shara was distracted previously, but Sento had absently intended to do something similar next time Shara was asleep, and it had slipped his mind. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t also think Lita was pretty much to blame for what had happened to Kes, but he definitely thought that it was its own punishment, and staying angry at her wasn’t going to help much. She’d nearly been killed, and still wasn’t out of the woods, and Norasol was miserably caught between being furious with her and needing to forgive her to move on and come up with a new plan. Sento hadn’t known them long, but he knew Norasol was suffering pretty badly. There hadn’t been a lot in her life that she couldn’t handle, but this was probably up there. 

Breha smiled at him, understanding and conspiratory and pleased. She walked next to him, intimidating and stately for all she was effectively in her pajamas. Sento hadn’t realized that Lita was staying in a room so close to Breha’s personal quarters, but that was apparently the case. 

“-- course you can’t go,” Norasol was saying, “and who’s to say you’ll ever be well enough to be useful to them? They don’t need you to be a martyr, they have plenty who could do it more effectively.”

Breha made a face, a taut but still somehow lovely grimace, and Lita answered, “Oh, throw it in my face, thank you, that’s extremely helpful.” It was possibly the first ungraceful thing Sento had ever heard Lita say. 

“It’s the most helpful thing either of  _ us _ is capable of,” Norasol said bitterly. Breha quickened her pace and swept into the room, rather than overhear any more. Sento would have hung out in the hallway for a few minutes, but he supposed a queen couldn’t lurk like that. So he followed, trying to make it look like neither of them had been hurrying.

“Oh, Norasol, good, you’re here,” Breha said. “I just ran into Sento walking the baby to sleep, I thought maybe we could come in for a visit.”

Lita looked terrible. She had, this whole time-- and Sento wouldn’t gladly repeat the flight here, with her cold and pale and getting worse by the moment; he’d been sure she’d die before they made it, but he’d also been sure Shara was going to go into labor from sheer emotion, though she hadn’t made a sound either-- but she looked a different kind of terrible, now, and he was sure Norasol had meant to come here to console her, from how miserable Norasol looked too. 

“He’s  _ just _ asleep,” Sento said quietly, and went immediately over to sit on the bed next to Lita. She had various tubes and things still hooked up to her, and he wasn’t sure if she was strong enough to hold the baby. She burst silently into tears, and he pretended not to notice, turning his body to put the infant close to her. She held her arms out, so he set about the touchy and delicate process of transferring the sleeping baby without waking him.

It went smoothly enough; Lita tucked him against her shoulder, and leaned back against the raised head of the bed, and Poe fussed without opening his eyes, then settled, finding his thumb and plugging his mouth with it. Lita closed her eyes and wiped her face so her streaming tears wouldn’t fall on him, and Sento gently tucked the burp cloth from his shoulder over hers instead. 

“Tell her she can’t join the Rebellion,” Norasol said to Breha, clearly so worked-up she couldn’t just take the hint and snuggle. 

“I’m not in the business of telling Lita Dameron what she can and cannot do,” Breha said, managing to be both gentle and firm. “I will admit that we have discussed it before, off-handedly. Lita would have to resign as leader of the Oaxctli, and go covertly. Firstly, her condition as of yet won’t allow this, but secondly, it’s crucial that as many of the surviving Oaxctli as possible must all convene in one place to select a new leader.”

“We have to do that anyway,” Lita said softly, wiping her face and looking up from the sleeping baby in her arms. “I can no longer serve, now that my name is compromised in the Empire’s eyes. I’ll have to disappear from here one way or another, and whether that’s to join the Rebellion or just to disappear, I still have to do it.”

Norasol let her breath out, crossing her arms over her chest, but she didn’t argue; clearly, that was truly how it worked. “So where can we possibly get everyone together?” she asked. “After the Imperials came, Tito and the others cleaned out the old compound and distributed all the stuff around so there wouldn’t be anything to find. Everything and everyone is all spread around all over. It’ll take weeks just to get the word out.”

“You can all meet here,” Breha said. “We can help you.”

“Celly,” Norasol began, and Sento thought it sounded like a name. 

“You won’t have to work with Celly if you don’t want to,” Breha said. “Of course you don’t. That hasn’t changed. But her logistical expertise is certainly at your disposal for this. And her organization provides the perfect cover for keeping Lita off the Empire’s radar once she has recuperated, to either shuffle into the Rebellion or pursue whatever future she would prefer.”

Sento looked curiously at Norasol, who seemed placated, or at least stymied, by this; she sat with her mouth pressed closed, and her eyes turned down. But then Poe snuffled and wriggled, and she looked over at Lita. Her whole aspect changed at whatever she saw there, Lita holding the baby and silently trying not to cry. 

“Norasol,” Sento said, “can you bring Poe back when you’re done here? I want to go sit with my daughter.”

“Is she all right?” Lita asked, wiping her face and looking up.

“She’s fine,” he said. “I’m just aware that if I don’t stick close I won’t be able to keep up with her.” He smiled, and Breha turned to him as he stood.

“I’ll walk back with you,” she said, and took his arm. 

_ I once walked arm-in-arm down a hallway with a queen,  _ Sento thought, just to try it on for size. It didn’t seem real.

 

~~~~~~~

 

_ She’d a list to the port and her sails in rags _ , Harter Kalonia sang to herself as she tidied the infirmary,  _ and the cook in the scuppers with the staggers and jags--  _

“God damn them all,” the med droid beeped along with her; he knew the song by now, though his sense of rhythm was lacking somewhat.

Kalonia laughed, and continued, recovering the beat,  _ I was told, we’d cruise the-- _ and spun around to pick up the stack of linens the cleaning droid had folded. She skidded to a halt and shrieked in startlement, because an unexpected intruder had nearly bumped into her. 

“Sorry, sorry!” he said, bobbling the datapad he was holding, and she caught her balance and covered her mouth, embarrassed. 

“Oh,” she said, “you startled me, no, I’m sorry-- I didn’t know anyone was there--”

“I snuck up,” he said. He was human, youngish maybe, broad-shouldered but thin, not obviously injured but not well-looking either, grimy and haggard. “Sorry!” He had an accent she couldn’t place. 

He’d certainly heard her duet with the med droid. How embarrassing. Worse, as she took him in and realized he was offering her the datapad, he was here as a patient. Oh, yes, that was a relevant dossier on the datapad. She held her hand out and took it. 

She hadn’t been a doctor long, she was barely out of her assistantship, and it was a struggle to be taken seriously. Normally she was fastidious about her professional appearance with new patients. But this was the overnight shift, and there was only one patient staying in the medbay, and he knew her by now and was used to her late-night duets.

“Ah,” she said, taking the datapad and trying to pull the tatters of her professional dignity into place. “You’re a new arrival, I see.”

One corner of his mouth was pulling upward, but he saw her looking and straightened his expression back into a somber frown. “Yes,” he said, “yes, I’ve just arrived.”

She couldn’t keep it up. “It’s all right to laugh,” she said, “I thought no one was here, and the med droid and I do duets on the night shift. It passes the time.”

“I liked the singing,” he said, expression softening to wistfulness. “I knew a guy who used to sing that song. I don’t know the words but I like the tune.”

“Oh,” she said, “it’s an old classic. Come on in, let’s have a look.”

She led him into the exam room, banging expertly on the stuck switch on the med scanner as she went by so that it would boot up, and clicked the door shut, all while she glanced over the dossier on the datapad. Kes Dameron, 21, non-citizen native of Alderaan, vaccinations up to date, no known allergies except hassa dander which was something 99% of humans were allergic to so that wasn’t a surprise and mostly was included to make it clear that the form had actually been filled out in most cases. No known conditions, last physical half a standard cycle ago, hm. He shouldn’t need a new one, then. She glanced up at him. He had taken a seat on the edge of the exam table and was staring the scanner down like it might bite him. 

Well, however he’d gotten here he looked like he’d had a rough ride. He had no shoes, and his feet were wrapped in grubby, if tidy, bandages. His jacket was clearly borrowed from someone shorter than he was, and left his wrists sticking awkwardly out, and his wrists were bruised, like-- 

Oh. Those were shackle marks. She looked back down at the datapad and flipped to the next screen of information, which was-- 

_ Oh _ . It was a report detailing his torture at the hands of the Empire, including some logs of sessions from IT-0 droids that some skilful operative had managed to steal from a networked Imperial computer. Andor’s callsign was attached to it; he was the agent who’d extracted Dameron.

Ah. If it was Andor, those were genuine; Andor never fucked around.

She looked up at Dameron, and went and shut off the scanner, which was emitting its customary high-pitched whining noise as it calibrated. “I won’t make you listen to that,” she said. The last patient she’d had in here fresh off an IT-0 session had been largely catatonic, except that the scanner’s whining would send him into panicked screaming fits. She’d use a handheld instead, it would give her enough data. Had, for that poor soul, though there wasn’t much data to be had in his case.

Dameron blinked, and refocused on her instead of the scanner. He had very dark eyes, and the shadows under them made them look even darker. “I,” he said, “if you need to use it, it’s-- it’s all right.”

“I don’t need it,” she said. “These logs-- which ones are yours?”

“The-- oh, the interrogation logs,” he said. “No, those are all mine. Andor got a lot of records but he stripped out the irrelevant ones.”

She frowned, and looked up at him, shaking her head slightly. The dates were right on them, it was all this past couple of weeks. It was dozens of six-hour sessions, including more than one back-to-back consecutive session. The last one was dated five days previous. Now that she looked, they were all tagged with an identification number; they were all for the same subject.

“How are you walking, let alone talking?” she asked, her incredulous horror making her speak when she probably shouldn’t. “The drugs shouldn’t even be entirely out of your system. This is--” It was more data than they usually had on a subject, to be sure, but in the ad-hoc handbook they had, conventional wisdom put the human limit at fewer sessions than this, and that was just for survivability, let alone coherence.

Dameron shrugged one shoulder. “I’m just good at, what do you call it? Metabolizing.”

“It’s a valuable life skill,” she said. She looked down at the logs again, and shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re coherent. I guess-- I mean, I guess we’ll start with physical condition and take a peek at those bandages and go from there.”

Andor came in while she was examining the punctures at the nape of Dameron’s neck, and her first hint was that Dameron’s already-taut shoulders went even tighter. She glanced up, and saw nothing, but after a moment, Andor made his appearance, looking his typical slightly-malnourished underslept self. He had a pack slung over one shoulder, and looked travel-grimy, though not as much as Dameron.

Dameron must have uncanny hearing; Kalonia’s was quite good, and she hadn’t heard Andor’s footfalls. 

“Will he live?” Andor asked, making more of an attempt at levity than he normally bothered with. 

“I mean, there are never guarantees of that,” Kalonia said, gently pushing Dameron’s hair back up to get a better look at the bruising. He had black, black hair, thick and soft and badly in need of a wash. “But if you mean, will he die from the interrogation, the answer is most likely no.”

“Good,” Andor said. “K2 complained so much about carrying him out of there, it’d be a shame.” He seemed to nearly lose the thread of his own conversation as he spoke, frowning at the young man on the examination table. He came up and tilted his head. “No, I’m kidding, you’ve already done enough to have made that entire exercise worthwhile, Dameron.”

She couldn’t see Dameron’s expression, but Andor smiled wryly at him. It clicked, then, that Dameron’s accent was similar to his-- sharp and sibilant, and they probably spoke the same language natively. She was interested in languages; she mentally made a note to look that one up, and add whatever it was to her list to learn. 

“I can still do more with that,” Dameron said. 

“Maybe,” Andor said. “First on the list, though, is getting you a hot bath and a warm bed, the sonic at the last place barely put a dent in the grime on you and I won’t have you wandering around here looking so ragged. We’re a Rebellion, not a refugee camp.”

Dameron drew himself up, and Kalonia had a moment to see his face-- he was offended. “Excuse you,” he said, frosty.

Andor held his hands out, dismayed. “Ah,” he said, and followed it up with a string of words, liquid and crisp-sibilant. 

Dameron sniffed, a skeptical sound, but looked down, apparently letting it go. Kalonia supposed the byplay didn’t involve her, so she looked at the readouts from the handheld scanner, which had finished computing. 

“Well,” she said. “You could do with a good meal and some sleep. Your stress levels are terrible, your immune system is overtaxed, your reflexes are all messed up, and I expect you’ll need some therapy and possibly some medication to rebalance your brain chemistry, but the food and rest will get you off to an excellent start. You’re… in a much different condition than the logs would suggest you ought to be, based on our past patients, however.”

“If it’s not that bad now, though,” Dameron said, a little anxiously, “that means that it won’t get worse, right?”

“Well,” she said, and Andor was watching her nearly as intently as Dameron was. “I mean. You may have some rough patches, going forward, but if you’re asking me if you’re likely to slip into a catatonic state and die like most of the other interrogation victims we’ve had in here, the answer’s probably no.” She mentally reviewed that, and grimaced; she needed to work on her phrasing. “Not to put it too bluntly.”

“That’s good,” Andor said. 

“It is,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean it absolutely won’t happen, so if you find that you can’t differentiate reality from delusion, for example, or that you can’t sleep, or that you have panic attacks, you absolutely do need to keep up with us. In fact I’m going to recommend that you come back for some frequent follow-ups, since your condition is so unexpected and what happened to you was so drastic. But-- that’s not to take away from the optimism of my diagnosis. I think you’ll be fine. I just really want to keep a close eye on you for a little bit.”

“It’ll be good,” Andor said, “we can keep your file updated and see if we can learn anything else from it.”

Dameron nodded, somber. 

“Cheer up,” Andor said, “I brought you shoes.” He produced them from his pack, new-looking decent boots. “And socks.” 

 

~~~~

 

The really great thing about this base was that there was a phenomenal bathing facility; the planet had abundant water, and some enterprising souls had transformed one of the ruined buildings into a really nice bathhouse with banks of showers and big hot soaking tubs and an enormous cold pool carved out with a waterfall from the river that all the water was drawn from. 

Dameron had mentioned several times that he was a Planetsider, and his reaction to the climate here made it pretty plain that he was from more of the “jungle” than “desert” side of that spectrum. So the facilities didn’t blow his mind the way they tended to with desert planetsiders, who couldn’t fathom the sheer quantity of water involved. He still looked pretty impressed, and more importantly, delighted. 

Cassian had figured on bathing too, and so he was about half-naked before he noticed that Dameron’s resemblance to his father extended to much of his body. Like Molo, he was well-built, lean and muscled and substantial, and his skin bore small tattooed markings reminiscent of the ones that had adorned Molo’s body and face. Looking at the tattoos was a mistake, because then he was looking at Dameron, and it had been years since Molo’s death but now it was all fresh in Cassian’s mind, like he’d last touched him only yesterday. 

“Oh,” Cassian said belatedly, after probably too long a pause, “I’ll take your old clothes to get washed.”

Dameron hesitated, holding his shirt in his hands. “I know they’re pretty beat-up,” he said, “but there’s-- my auntie wove this, you know?” He picked at the stitching on the neck seam of his shirt.

“I know,” Cassian said, though he hadn’t really. It had just looked like a grimy shirt to him. “I’ll make sure you get it back.”

Dameron nodded, and put it down on the bench next to where Cassian had already laid out the stack of clean clothes he’d picked up from the quartermaster. He put his hand to his chest, as if he were expecting there to be something there, like a necklace or something, but there was nothing. Cassian looked away and finished getting undressed, then led the way to the showers. 

He himself was pretty bruised from the mission just before the rescue of Dameron; old bruises, fading away, but still ugly under his skin. Molo would have said something about them, either sympathetic or scolding, but of course, Dameron just kept his eyes mostly averted. He was clearly used to communal shower etiquette; his dossier detailed that he’d done a lot of traveling, working all over the galaxy, so he’d probably seen pretty much every variation on common hygiene facilities.

Dameron spent some time scrubbing at his injured feet, really cleaning out the embedded grime and picking at the scabbing cuts to free them from debris. Cassian had cleaned them pretty well before bandaging them, but his facilities had been limited. He waited, first under the stream of water then moving out of the way to drip on the tiles while Dameron finished with his feet.

“They healing okay?” he asked. 

Dameron glanced up, wiping water out of his eyebrows with one forearm. “Yeah,” he said. 

“Sorry about the refugee camp comment,” Cassian added impulsively. “I forgot you don’t know I’m one too.”

Dameron shut the water off and shook water out of his face. “No, I know,” he said. “You’re from Fest.”

Cassian frowned at Dameron’s back as the other turned and walked toward the tubs at the end of the hallway. It was a separate room, much larger, partially outdoors, and there was a stunning view of the gas giant’s curve filling most of the sky, hanging low over the purple-black forest. 

“How much do you remember about me?” he asked, as Dameron climbed into the tub. He was so young, was the thing, he was young like Cassian had been, not like Molo, and his body had that trim perfection of just-past-teenagerhood; he had a few scars and flaws here and there from a clearly active youth, but mostly, he was unmarred, perfect like a holo star, his muscle all smooth and new with none of the ropiness of hard use yet, everything symmetrical and clear and beautiful.

Except, of course, for the shackle marks and the injection-site bruises, and where he’d beaten himself up in his frantic flight to escape, his hands and his feet torn up and defensive marks on his forearms and bruises on his shoulders and thighs from lifting things too heavy to hold as he barricaded doors behind himself. They were fading, but still visible.

“Some,” Dameron said, sliding under the water until he found the bench. He sighed as he settled onto it. “Oh wow, this is great.”

“It is,” Cassian said, taking his own seat on the bench a moderate distance away. 

“We always talked about putting something like this in at the family compound,” Dameron said wistfully, “but we were never sure we’d get to stay that long, so we never did.”

“Were you still at the same place as when I came?” Cassian asked. He remembered it pretty well, a cozy if cobbled-together little settlement, with livestock everywhere. 

Dameron nodded. “We’d been there a while,” he said. He settled lower, until his chin touched the water, looking sad. “I bet we’ve scattered now, though.”

“You think?” Cassian asked. 

Dameron nodded. “Imperials came,” he said, “that means it’s not a good place. We had a plan already, for where all the parts would go, who took what livestock, where.” He sighed. “I guess it’s good we just harvested so much stuff with all the people who came in for the wedding. While we had all that labor, we put away a lot of stuff, so that’s easy to distribute or sell or whatever. It’s the live animals that are trouble, but we had homes picked out for them. It’s just a question of getting them there. And the crops, but we always had a backup stock of seeds so we can build again.”

Cassian nodded. He knew how it was. He’d noticed even at the time, a lot of the compound had been made from shipping containers, and they could be made back into shipping containers. He’d admired it at the time, though he’d been distracted. 

Dameron ducked down and sat with his head under the water for a long moment, letting out a few bubbles. Cassian kept an eye on him, but knew not to worry. Eventually Dameron surfaced and wiped his face, sitting back against the edge of the tub. “These tubs are amazing,” he said. “Do we ever have to get out?”

Cassian laughed. “Not for a while,” he said. “And then I figured I’d put you straight to bed.”

Dameron nodded. “Maybe I could sleep,” he said. Cassian knew he hadn’t been, not well, but hopefully it was all settling out and he’d get some kind of normal sleep cycle back once the drugs all washed out of him. 

“I know I could,” Cassian put in. He was overdue for a full night of it, and this wouldn’t be-- it would be morning here in a few more hours, and he’d be expected to finish making his reports. 

Dameron sighed, and tipped his head back. One of his little tattoos was along the lower edge of his collarbone. After a moment, Cassian couldn’t help reaching out and tracing his finger over it. Dameron twitched, but didn’t move, opening his eyes to regard Cassian warily. It was a vulnerable position, his throat bared, and his pulse fluttered in the artery just under his jaw. 

“Molo had markings like these,” Cassian said. He should pull his hand away; Dameron didn’t know him that well, and clearly wasn’t comfortable. “On his chest, and his ribs, and on his face. Under his cheekbone.”

“Yes,” Dameron said. “I mean, we weren’t close, but I did know him.”

“What do they mean?” Cassian asked. 

Dameron let his eyes go blank, looking up toward the sky, and the reflected light limned his face in purple edges. He shook his head slightly. “We don’t talk about them,” he said. “It’s not-- we don’t talk about it.”

Cassian made himself pull his hand back. “He had three dots under his lower lip,” he said. “I always-- I never asked why but I always wondered what that meant.”

“We don’t put them on our faces anymore,” Dameron said, still looking up at the planet, though his expression was bleaker. “If you were born on the old planet, maybe you got them on your face, but the exile kids, we don’t. And we don’t talk about what they mean.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “My son probably won’t even get them on his body. There’s nobody left to do them but Norasol, and she won’t if--” He broke off. “We don’t talk about them.”

“Norasol didn’t have any markings on her face,” Cassian said, though he knew he should stop. 

Dameron opened his eyes and looked over at Cassian. “Did you have sex with my father just the one time, or was it like, an ongoing thing?”

_ You definitely asked for that _ , Cassian thought, keeping his expression neutral. “It was a few times,” he said. “Molo was good to me. He was a good person, kinder than most would be in his line of work. He helped me a lot more than he had to, and I liked him a lot, and there wasn’t a lot of that in my life.”

“Is it weird?” Dameron asked, merciless. “I know I look like him, people keep telling me so. Is it weird?”

“It could be weirder,” Cassian said. “I was younger than you are now, and he was older than I am now, but it could be weirder.”

Dameron turned his head a little, then, and looked at Cassian. “Really, you think so?”

“Am I making it weird?” Cassian asked. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to.”

“No,” Dameron said, relenting a little, and turned his head back to look at the sky again. “You’re fine.” He rubbed his face. “I never asked my mother very much about him. It’s not that I never wondered, I just. Where do you start?”

“He was… I mean, he worked with me in Intelligence,” Cassian said, and leaned back next to Dameron, looking up at the sky too. “So he didn’t… talk freely about a lot of stuff. But. Once when he thought he was dying he told me about you, and asked me to tell you what had happened to him.” He glanced over at Dameron, whose eyebrows had pulled together but was still looking up. “So I mean. Take from that what you will, but I know he cared a lot that you existed.”

“I didn’t figure he and my mom were ever, like, a love match,” Dameron said. 

“He was fond of her,” Cassian said. “He really-- he admitted to me that he was really in love with Norasol, but he was, he said some pretty nice things about Lita too.” He’d also told Cassian, in an intimate moment, an incredibly salacious story about how baby Kes had been conceived, involving all three of them, but Cassian figured not-so-baby Kes here didn’t need to hear that story if neither of the women had ever felt the need to tell it to him. That story would certainly fall across the line of  _ making it weird _ . 

“It’s, I mean, pretty impossible not to have opinions about either of the two of them,” Dameron said. He looked bleak, though.

Cassian remembered, then, that it was Lita’s fault really that the Empire had come for them. “Well,” he said. 

Dameron shook his head slightly. “I’m not mad at her,” he said. “But I’m not ready to tell her that.”

“Understandable,” Cassian said. “At least you’re both alive.”

“True,” Dameron said. He rubbed his face with his wet hands, and groaned. “If Shara hasn’t had that baby by now she’s got to be miserable. I can’t fucking believe I missed it. But at least I’m not dead.”

“We can’t get you back there in time,” Cassian said. “We never really could have.”

“I know,” Dameron said, and sat up. “I know.” He sighed, then leaned to sink under the water again, blowing a couple of morose bubbles before surfacing. “Even if I could fall asleep without my goddamn brainwaves tricking me into thinking I’m back in that machine, I can’t because I’m so goddamn worried about her.”

“Fair,” Cassian said. He rubbed his hands together under the water’s surface, working out the stiffness from holding the control yoke too tight as he flew. It was a bad habit. He carried too much tension in his whole body. “We  _ can _ get you to a place where you can do a live holocall, though. Not tomorrow, maybe the day after. Just need to lean on the comms people to set it up, and send a message to Alderaan so they know to be there to pick up.”

Dameron picked his head up keenly. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Cassian said. “I mean, I had been planning on it, I just have to make the arrangements, and there’s a few people I’ll have to coordinate with. We just need you to be to a point where you can act normal in public, on your end, and you’re nearly there.” He shrugged. “Shouldn’t be difficult.”

Dameron wriggled, there was really no other way of describing it, moved violently enough to slosh the water nearly up Cassian’s nose, then subsided with a gusty sigh. “Okay now I’m keyed-up,” he said, and laughed, rubbing his face. “Stars, can we go  _ now _ ?”

Cassian looked over at him, and Dameron laughed and shook his head. “I know, I heard what you said. Day after tomorrow. I can-- I just have to wait.”

“I’m not being an asshole,” Cassian said, “it’ll really probably take that long to arrange. I’ll see if someone else could do it faster, though, really. I’m on, like, five projects, and it doesn’t have to be someone with my clearance level.”

“I mean,” Dameron said, but clearly didn’t have an ending for the sentence. He was-- he was  _ so young _ .

“No, I understand,” Cassian said. “It’s a  _ baby _ . That’s a big deal. It sucks I can’t get you there for it. I’m sure we’ll work something out so you can at least see them, but probably not until the kid’s old enough to travel.”

Dameron nodded. “I think the general rule’s two or three months,” he said, “though a lot of people don’t want to take babies offworld for even longer than that.” He shrugged. “Shara was born in space, though, so she might feel differently. We hadn’t… gotten as far as talking about that.”

“I can imagine,” Cassian said. He sighed, and tipped his head back and let his shoulders really sink down for a moment. “Well, sorry to wind you up right before bed, but if you’re feeling clean enough, there’s about four hours left to sleep and I suggest you try it.”

“I’ll try it,” Dameron said. “You’re right, I should try to be functional tomorrow.” They hadn’t really been keeping a day/night kind of schedule at all. 

“I have a room,” Cassian said, “and it’s usually meant to sleep two, so I’ll put you in the spare bed in there for tonight. Tomorrow we can see about getting you your own space, or whatever you want. And we can see if you want to find out what a Pathfinder is.”

“Okay,” Dameron said. He took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Okay.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> * Thank you to everyone still reading, I'm not sure I've tagged this adequately but I've been proofreading it in three-minute chunks all week and I don't remember what it's about anymore.
> 
> * Lyrics stolen from, of course, Stan Rogers's Barret's Privateers, in an homage to my own folk music nerdery over on the Home in the Wind series and a commenter there who couldn't believe I hadn't used any Stan Rogers. I am one thousand percent sure they have space pirate space shanties like that. 
> 
> * I asked on tumblr *and* on Facebook how on earth a gas giant's moon would behave as a potentially-inhabitable planet, and got a lot of answers but not a lot of useful ones. I'm not just "bad at math", I actually have a pretty serious math learning disability, so the physics problems people gave me to solve to figure it out made me literally crawl under a desk, so I guess I've really got no choice but to adopt the classic sci-fi approach of Just Make It Up. If anyone has a clearer understanding of it and wants to describe to me how it would really work, I'd love that, but if you're going to tell me I ought to look it up and do math, please just go ahead and don't do that because if I were capable I already would have. I honestly don't have the mental capacity to do a thorough job on the underlying physics here, I can't overstate how serious I am about that.  
> Above all else, recall that _literally no_ professional paid-to-do-this Star Wars writer has ever given more than one minute's thought to how this would work, and continue from that perspective. (I know because I tried to research it, remember?)  
>  (tl;dr I would dearly love to be one of those great hard-SF writers whose worldbuilding obeys physics laws, but since I can't actually understand the laws of physics, that's just got to be one of my hard limits. Maybe someday I'll get myself a math-literate coauthor or something. Listen, all my RL friends are scientists and I already have a giant inferiority complex about it, let's not dwell on this.)
> 
> p.s. yes yes the title is a reference to the [latest Martha Wells novella](http://www.marthawells.com/murderbot.htm) and is not particularly significant but once the phrase was in my head I couldn't get it out. (If you like character-driven stories about belonging I recommend basically her entire body of work.)


End file.
